


The Case of the Drago Knight Deep Dive

by DroppedAllTheseOreos



Series: The Dragon Jesus Saga [1]
Category: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21985885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DroppedAllTheseOreos/pseuds/DroppedAllTheseOreos
Summary: After a few months of working on their own things, Poppy and Kiriya decide to get their dynamic duo back together to dive into proto Drago Knight Hunter Z and pull Graphite into the world of the living again.
Relationships: Kujou Kiriya & Poppy Pipopapo
Series: The Dragon Jesus Saga [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601899
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	The Case of the Drago Knight Deep Dive

**Author's Note:**

> Poppy and Kiriya jumping out of Bakusou Bike and generally hanging out is something I've noticed myself really clinging to in Ex-Aid. I wish the relationship was expanded, so here I am doing it myself lol.
> 
> This was supposed to be a little prologue to a bigger fic that's hopefully going up soon, but once I hit 8,000 ish words on it and realized 6,000 of those words were this I realized it probably would do better as its own thing.
> 
> This fic is part of a series that is pretty much a holiday present to myself that spiraled out of control into my thoughts on what the insides of the Genm games are like based off games I know and love, like Monster Hunter, and filling in things I don't exactly remember with whatever the heck I think sounds cool. I wanted to post this on Christmas last year, but it got too huge and intimidating. Now that I have a few more works under my belt, I finally felt the confidence I needed to finish this monster up.

Even though CR cleaned up nearly every problem the Dans and the Bugster Virus created, they knew their work was far from done. There were vaccines to develop, conferences to hold, and the public to placate and inform. On top of that, the most daunting task of all, patients to recover and rehabilitate. They'd gotten the master Chronicle gashat, finally, but it was still a huge biohazard to deal with, to bugsters and humans alike. So, patient recovery was put on hold while they figured out a safe way to purge the Gamedeus virus or at least lower the infection rate so they could work with it.

While they'd gotten used to their duties and schedules, major holidays would always throw them into chaos. And this time of year especially so, with Christmas looming a week away. Everyone was working themselves ragged, trying to get work done as efficiently as possible so they could still have time to celebrate when the day arrived.

And while they were running around, Parad and Kuroto had a lot of time to catch up. Kuroto, since he was in Pipopapo Prison; and Parad because no one had time to figure out what to do with him, and he seemed content to sit around and play video games until they did. Although, Poppy and Kiriya had no problems reminding him he could help put up holiday decorations for the Christmas party next week. But Parad didn't seem very receptive and kept lying on the couch, playing his Genmboy. Until someone else found Parad _something_ to do, he seemed content to just sit around in the CR break room with Kuroto, murmuring to each other without ever talking face to face. To most people, it looked like they didn't get along, but to Poppy, it looked like they were scheming.

Once the holiday decorations were put up, they got everyone together to have one final meeting before the holiday crunch was really on them and they wouldn't be able to see each other until the party. As always, they invited Parad to join in since he was such a huge help at the end of Chronicle, but, as always, he declined in favor of hanging out with Kuroto. Everyone was unsurprised and started the meeting instead of trying to convince him any more. But Poppy found she couldn't focus and tuned into Parad and Kuroto's conversation. The two of them being all secretive together kept bothering her.

Parad asked Kuroto if Graphite could be brought back like him and Poppy. While his voice was soft and the two were far away from the others in her corner, she could still hear them. The question piqued her interest. She had to admit, of all the bugsters, she missed Graphite a little. Someone like him would be a soothing presence in the sea of manic energy the rest of the team was.

But, Kuroto refused to try. He explained that between injecting himself with Gamedeus's virus and Saki's data getting deleted, Graphite's code was an absolute wreck, and it'd be a nightmare to go across all his files to try and reassemble him.

Parad tried to protest, but Kuroto cut him off.

He couldn't guarantee any Graphite that came back would be the version Parad was familiar with since that Graphite was born from Saki's memories. Any Graphite he brought back was more likely to be a basic version of him, like any other bugster on their first time infecting a human.

Parad tried to provoke him with some carefully dropped comments all along the lines of: "I guess even God has his limits." 

But Kuroto stubbornly refused to take the bait. All in all, it seemed like a plausible enough explanation, and eventually, Parad dropped it. Kiriya shifted in the seat next to her, and they glanced at each other from the corner of their eyes. He quirked an eyebrow at her before Hiiro was sighing heavily, asking him to pay attention. The rest of CR didn't have reasons to be fond of Graphite anyways, so if they heard Kuroto, no one objected.

No one except for Medical Detective Extraordinaire Poppy Pipopapo, of course.

Granted, she only had two cases under her belt, but both of them dealt with bugster data and diving into protogashats, so this was her area of expertise. Kuroto not wanting to bring Graphite back was suspicious, so Poppy decided she should investigate. First things first, talking to Parad about Kuroto's relationship with Graphite and asking if there might be any other reasons he was opposed to bringing him back.

With her questioning phase over, the second step was investigating the actual condition of Graphite's data. Everything Kuroto said was just a hypothesis, and she needed to test it. When she was sure everyone had left CR for the night, and her new roommates were wrapped up in their own things, she dug out the case of protogashats and took them down into the quarantine room. The regular Drago Knight Hunter Z gashat had been passed to Nico since she was the only one without a level up, so Poppy would have to ask her for a look at it some other time. She took out proto Drago Knight and opened the game's title screen, cringing at how loud the jingle was and glancing up at the observation window and the door to see if anyone came to check.

"You didn't believe Kuroto about all that 'can't find Graphite's data' stuff, huh?" A familiar voice suddenly cut through Poppy's focus.

She twirled towards the computer and saw Kiriya casually leaning against the desk, arms crossed. "Kiriya?"

"Yo," He approached with a smile, taking a seat in the desk chair and wheeling himself to sit across from her.

"You noticed their whole conversation, too?"

"I mean, we were on the same side of the table, and I've been trying to keep tabs on Beanpole and God ever since they started getting buddy-buddy again." He shrugged.

Poppy pursed her lips. "Fair."

"So, what's the case this time, Detective Poppy?" Kiriya smirked.

She looked at the cartridge and shook her head. "I really hope I'm overthinking it, but I am getting a bad feeling about all of this... If he's planning something, bringing Graphite back is the most direct way to ruin it. And if he's just being petty, then this is another way to mess with him." A small smile tugged at her mouth. "Also, it might just be nice to have Graphite back regardless of Kuroto's reasons. You probably didn't hear much about this, but while I was with the bugsters in Chronicle, he was the only one who was decent to me."

Poppy's brows furrowed, and she swallowed hard as she thought about what she was going to say next.

"Parad... hasn't been the best to me, but it must be lonely for him since he only really has Emu. Everyone's still distrusting of him. And I've forgiven him for things, even if I haven't gotten an apology for it. But I don't want to be around him sometimes." She absentmindedly wrung her hands together, and Kiriya frowned. "With the holidays coming up, I figured it'd be nice to have someone besides Emu or me to hang out with. Since that's what it's about, right? Togetherness and all that."

"Well," Kiriya gave her a small grin, "Petty or not, you know I'm always down to mess up Kuroto's plans."

Poppy nodded. "Honestly, if it's just him being bitter like we think, then I wouldn't be surprised."

"Yeah." Kiriya's smile grew, "Plus, I wouldn't mind giving these files another look. It's been a while since..." He looked away dramatically. "The racetrack incident."

She chuckled a little. "Entirely your fault, by the way."

"And how is that even true?" He narrowed his eyes playfully.

Kiriya managed to catch a small smile working its way onto her face as she shook her head exasperatedly.

"Oh, Poppy, since you discovered how to access patient data in Mighty Action Origin, we should check up on people in the protogashats." Poppy lowered her voice to sound more like him. "Here, let's ignore the briefcase I filled with potentially safer options I took weeks of careful time and effort to steal from Masamune and use my Bakusou Bike." She mocked.

"For the record, you wanted to try DoReMiFa Beat, and I heard Hiiro _exploded_ when he lost against that one bugster. Doesn't sound safer to me."

"You don't actually explode in game!" She managed to squeak out around a laugh and nudged him on the shoulder. "Anyways, back to business, are you gonna come with me and do this?"

He tried to hide his relief at being able to lift her mood a little by turning away to stand and kick the chair aside. "Of course, I think it's time to bring back our combo for another protogashat adventure." She stifled a giggle at that.

Poppy shook her head a little with a fond smile and prepared to jump, protogashat clutched in hand.

They passed through the thin veil of the game screen into the world of Drago Knight Hunter. Poppy marveled at how picturesque it was, even with muted colors. Beautiful forests and grasslands spotted with sparkling bodies of water, and what looked like human settlements were spread out before them, sprawling to the edges of her vision where they slowly became rougher and low poly. She could barely make out areas that were just blocks and pixels since they were covered by thick mist and clouds to hide the unpolished areas. Her appreciation of the world was cut short when she realized they'd appeared much, much higher off the ground than she expected they would.

"This is a pipopepo problem, Piriya!" She screamed.

"This is already worse than the racetrack!" He scanned the area below them. "I don't see any places that we could land. We might have to—"

He got clocked in the back of the head at that moment, sending him flipping as they continued to plummet. Poppy took a moment to register what hit him, and her face fell slack in shock as she saw a dragon with brilliant white and grey scales, gleaming in the sunlight as powder fell gracefully from its moth-like wings. It was keeping pace with their fall, and she noticed the shadow of its ribcage against a slowly growing blue glow.

With a panicked shriek, she grasped onto whatever she could reach on Kiriya and teleported them away in a mess of bubbles and glitter just as the dragon let out a vicious spray of glowing scales their way. They ungracefully landed somewhere in the forest near a lake. 

"Thanks for the save there, Poppy." He groaned out, still mostly face down in the dirt and moss.

"No problem." She dropped his ankle and sat up, rubbing at her shoulder.

They took a few moments to get themselves together and started looking around their crash site.

"Well, I guess we kinda got a good look at what the area's like. Did you notice anything that looked like it would have the patient data—? Oh, hey, wait, you have a thing, can I—" Kiriya pointed to a clump of moss still stuck to her hair.

She nodded and let him pluck it out as she recalled what she managed to take in.

"I did see what looked like camps or some kind of human settlement. The problem is I panicked while teleporting us here, so I have no idea where it is in relation to us."

Kiriya hummed in thought. "We might have to start walking. Just gotta watch out for dragons. Unless... should we fight our way to the data?"

"Do you know how to take down an entire dragon?" Poppy grimaced.

He pushed his lips together tightly until she could see his dimples, his eyes starting to glaze over as he stared at some middle distance, probably running the numbers on how to accomplish it.

"Yeah, me neither." She sighed.

"I mean, I've seen Emu play Drago Knight once. He had a different version for his handheld." Poppy quirked an eyebrow at him, and he sighed. "Yeah, yeah, genius gamer and all that, let's stick to what we're good at and run."

"Just because we survived Bakusou Bike does not mean running is the only thing we're good at." She pouted.

He chuckled. "We outran bikes on foot Poppy. I'd say we're pretty fucking good at it."

Poppy pointedly ignored him and started walking. Kiriya shrugged his jacket off and threw it over his shoulders to make the humid forest air more bearable, then jogged to catch up to her.

They walked for barely twenty minutes before they got attacked by another dragon. Kiriya had the idea to climb up a tall tree to get a vantage point on where they needed to go. As they traversed the forest, they finally found a suitable tree and started to climb. Around the midway point, they came to a platform created by the branches of the surrounding trees all growing together in a mesh-like pattern. It was high up enough where they could get a nice view, and they carefully stepped out onto the branches, crossing the ones they were on like a rickety bridge until their feet hit solid-ish ground on the branch platform.

As they made their way to the edge to look out, some rustling from the canopy drew their attention. Before either of them could make a move, a blur of blue and pale gray burst out from the treetops at them. They managed to dodge out of the way, and the monster skidded a few meters away, claws scrabbling for purchase in the bark. Their attacker leaped up into the trees again, grabbing onto the trunk directly above them.

They froze, Kiriya whispered something to Poppy about reptiles seeing movement as it hissed, showing off snake fangs, while the scales and feathers on its back rose like the hackles on a cat. Poppy completely blanked as she saw electricity running up and down its spine. It pounced before she could blink, Kiriya pulled them both to the side and roughly dragged her along the way they came.

Poppy slipped on a patch of moss and she felt herself float for a moment before slamming down onto the branch hard. Once Poppy regained her bearings, she realized she was halfway clipped into the tree because all she could see was the unshaded, smooth texture of the polygons making up her new prison. She could vaguely hear Kiriya yelling, and there was a tugging on the back of her dress and shoulders. But he seemed to leave because the pulling stopped and his voice got distant.

Poppy struggled to free herself from the branch, wiggling and pushing, but the tree branch was at the perfect angle to have fully encased her from the waist down, only leaving her upper back and shoulders mostly out of the tree. Her whole body juddered at a particularly hard push against and found she was halfway free. Her mouth and nose were still horrifyingly clipped through the tree, but at least she could see what was happening again.

Poppy didn't have much time to look around, though, because Kiriya was running back to her, the dragon in the distance, its movements now sluggish and disoriented.

"What did you do?"

"Paratoad! I'll explain later!"

Poppy was looking forward to that explanation since her brain only supplied her with the image of a big, chubby toad with Parad's hair.

Kiriya ended up glitching into the tree with her when he tried pulling her out again, but the added weight must've been too much for whatever messed up physics this game was working on, and they clipped out the other side. They bounced off the lower level of branches and hurtled towards the forest floor once again. In a burst of orange and pink pixels and glitter, they teleported, landing safely on the ground... in a place neither of them recognized.

"Did you intend to come here?" Poppy asked after a while.

"No..." Kiriya trailed off, looking for any familiar landmarks. "I was aiming for the ground, right below us but safe."

"Same here." Poppy grit her teeth. "Looks like teleportation is fucked here."

"Whoa!" Kiriya startled, and Poppy herself looked surprised. Usually she couldn't even swear if she wanted to. She knew what the words were, but they just never came to mind if she was in a situation where she would curse. It just wasn't in her code.

"Can you swear just because this is an M-rated game?" He raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged helplessly, brows furrowed in confusion. "Guess so."

They shared a grimace and got moving again."

* * *

After having a grand total of four more encounters with giant, deadly reptiles, they collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, Kiriya drenched in the saliva of the last monster they encountered.

"This is ridiculous." Kiriya groaned out. "Seriously, all we've been encountering is like boss monsters, I guess? Unless every monster is just this tough. It would make sense as to why Graphite's..." He waved his hand by way of explanation. "Graphite."

Poppy shook her head. "This has to be a harder part of the level! There's no way they'd send players out on missions like this for their first time. It's just cruel." She leaned back, settling her weight on her hands. "We could start trying to find weaker dragons. A village or something should be nearby, right? RPG type games always have you start off in a village with easy opponents."

"Yeah, but we still have no idea where to go from here."

Poppy let out a sharp breath. "Well... Guess it's time for more running. Let's pick a direction and get going? Which monster do you think was the weakest we encountered?"

"You want my honest opinion?" Kiriya said with a pinched expression.

Poppy grimaced, "I don't want it based on that face, but I think it'll be helpful in getting us somewhere, at least."

He sighed heavily. "The vore one."

Poppy blinked rapidly. "Kiriya, this isn't the time for jokes, I will destroy you—"

"Hear me out! It's slower, has more predictable attack patterns, no ranged attacks, the design isn't as cool as the others. Seems like first boss material." He held up his hands placatingly.

Poppy started walking back the way they came, and Kiriya picked up his pace to catch up. "If we encounter it again and the situation looks bad, I won't hesitate to throw you at it."

Kiriya only looked at her despairingly. "I'm sure it'd appreciate that since it seemed to enjoy the taste it got."

* * *

After a few more terrifying dragon encounters and directional changes that required them to henshin and fight to scrape by and escape, the difficulty level finally started to lower. After a few more kilometers of travel, all they were seeing were raptor-sized enemies and bigger, docile herbivores. With synchronized sighs of relief, the two bugsters collapsed near a watering hole. They laid in the grass, surrounded by herds of triceratops and brontosaurus-like creatures.

They took a few moments to recover and finally drop their Rider suits. They exchanged a shaky high five at finally making it to a safe part of the woods, and Kiriya flopped face down into the grass, rolling onto his back to catch his breath. Poppy sat in a straddle, head hanging and fingers gripping clumps of grass, like they were the only thing keeping her alive.

"Genm RPGs are fucking bullshit." Poppy wheezed, breath heaving.

"Yeah," Kiriya said weakly in response.

"Graphite better be grateful."

Kiriya turned on his side with all his effort to face her. "Yeah." He said again.

They stayed there, panting for a few more moments before Poppy looked at him again. "Need a bit more before we look for that patient data?"

He just slumped deeper into the grass and weakly gave her a thumbs up.

She laughed shakily. "Me too."

* * *

Once they were recovered, they made their way to the village they saw from above, and Poppy had never been so happy to see a tiny wood and grass shack in her entire life. As they passed by that first hut, they saw a few more, here and there until they saw smoke in the distance and hurried towards it. As they crested a hill, they were greeted with the sight of a settlement. There were huts and tents of all sizes and shapes in a semi-circle surrounding a big community campfire, where little figures were running around with pots and pans. As they looked outwards, a fortress-like structure loomed over the village in the distance.

Poppy was enchanted with the village at first. It was quaint and peaceful. This place might be a nice rest space away from CR if she ever felt overwhelmed. There was a blacksmiths workshop to one side, and vendors opposite of that hut selling potions in cute little bottles, and intricate weapons and armor for both humans and cats. Said cats walked around on their hind legs, and a group of them were carting food to a huge cat, chopping onions on an elevated work bench near the central bonfire. All around the giant chef cat, cast iron pots and pans on racks in the fire behind them bubbled and sizzled with all kinds of foods. Alpaca-like creatures in varying shades of grey with intricately patterned cloths thrown over their backs wandered around, some accompanied by villagers.

Unfortunately, the second she recognized the face of one of the villagers, it immediately ruined the lunch break plans she was making.

Unlike other times Poppy dove into gashats, where the patients were stored as mook bugsters or items; the Drago Knight Hunter virus' victims were all villagers. Out of the corner of her eye, Poppy noticed Kiriya's hand going to his gashat, and she did the same. It was eerie, seeing all these faces she'd only seen staring back at her from medical files walking around like this was totally normal. The Riders shared a glance, silently agreeing to hurry the investigation so they could either get Graphite's data or figure out where they needed to go next, not wanting to spend a second longer than they needed to here.

After a thorough inspection of the village and no signs of Graphite's data or some kind of main hub for the files like the one they saw in Bakusou Bike, they agreed they had to move on. Plus, patients were missing. After cross-referencing faces to the list of patient data on Kiriya's phone, they realized the people here were only players Graphite defeated during Chronicle. So the Zero Day patients they were looking for had to be somewhere else.

The fortress was the obvious next place to check, so they rushed out of the village. It was built around a huge tree, so tall its branches seemed like they were brushing the underbellies of the clouds floating by. There were alcoves carved from the trunk of the tree, and from this distance, they seemed tiny, like little chipmunk homes, but they were obviously huge given the size of the tree. The colors were all muted, but Poppy could make out multicolored banners, mainly in blues, yellows, and whites fluttering in a faint breeze.

"It's pretty even ground from here to there." Kiriya looked out at the plains before them appraisingly.

"Thank you," Poppy exhaled sharply. "I was afraid to ask, but teleporting is so messy in this game."

"Seriously, we need to have a chat with "God" when we get back."

He plugged in his gashat, and with the usual explosion of color, light, and sound, he appeared before her in his Level 2 form, with a yellow and pink helmet on the seat waiting for her. She popped it on and clipped it, then threw her leg over the seat. Kiriya kicked up his parking stand and let her get settled.

"Just like old times, huh?"

"Just go," Poppy smacked the top of his face plate.

With the roar of his engine, they left the village behind in a cloud of dust.

* * *

The tree fortress was way more elaborate than what they had to deal with in the village. Of course, that was expected, but Poppy and Kiriya gave each other sour looks at the thought of searching every nook of the tree. They couldn't even see all the rooms from when they were on the ground, so they climbed the whole thing to get a better sense of what they were dealing with. At least the NPCs here were actual characters for the game and not familiar dead faces.

As Poppy and Kiriya deliberated on how to systematically search, an NPC seemed to clip through one of the walls across from them. While that wouldn't be strange, given everything they'd seen in this game, they watched as the villager walked back out of the tree as easily as they went in. There didn't seem to be any general struggle or lag that usually came with clipping or glitching. It looked like they went through an actual, honest to Kuroto, door programmed to be in the game.

They decided to put their plans on hold and crossed the bridge connecting this alcove to the one the NPC had gone through. Sure enough, by the time they got there, another NPC was on the landing and passed through a barely visible hole carved into the trunk and wedged behind a merchant NPC's stall. Poppy took an anxious breath and ran after them.

The path led to the inside of the tree, but Poppy wasn't prepared for how breathtaking it would be. From what she could see, the entire tree was hollowed out and carved into some kind of library. The place they were in was filled with shelves, carved into the walls of the trunk, filled with books. Light filtered in from windows carved through the wood, bathing the room in a warm glow. There were floors below, connected by a spiraling set of stairs carved from the walls of the tree. From behind her, Kiriya whistled, the sound echoing down.

"I think we found it."

Poppy nodded excitedly, running over to one of the bookshelves and cracking it open. Instead of pictures or words strung together into prose, it was filled with lines of code similar to the ones she'd catch over Kuroto's shoulder while he tapped away at his keyboard.

"We found it." She sighed relievedly. "Check the book titles. They look like they have all the source code, so if we can find ones with patient names... Kiriya?"

The other bugster was wandering over to the staircase. "I wanna check out the other floors. Might be faster than going through every floor's books if the stuff we're looking for is further down, yeah?"

Poppy put the book back and jogged over to him. Once she was caught up, they made their way downstairs. Turned out to be the right move, because the next floor morbidly held almost everything they needed. Holes were carved into the walls of the trunk like upright graves, displaying names and the bodies of people who died during Zero Day. A plaque on the wall near the stairs going down explained how these were the bodies of "brave hunters" that went down in battle against fearsome foes. Poppy frowned, ready to get out of this room as soon as possible. While she'd seen this kind of grotesque display, treating lives like they were nothing but assets in Kuroto's games before, it never got easier to look at.

"Some are missing," Kiriya called out from the other end of the room, near the set of stairs heading down.

Poppy nodded and moved to join him, giving the room a last, somber glance before descending.

The next room was even more horrifying than the last. The players in the previous room were nicely preserved like they were in cryo chambers or wax museum figures behind safety glass. This room had a similar display, but the holes were packed in with dirt. Filthy and battered body parts poked out of some of them. The names carved above the "coffins" were worn down, and some characters were even scratched out. Kiriya opened the patient list on his phone, and they confirmed everyone missing from the upper floor and the village were here. They stopped in front of the hole labeled "Momose Saki," and a hand poked out from the dirt towards them, grimy and weathered, nails blackened from dirt. Poppy felt something inside her twist but she tried to rationalize that this was a good thing.

"Seems like Masamune couldn't completely get rid of her." She said shakily, trying her best to sound hopeful.

Kiriya nodded. "But it looks like he practiced deleting people before her, too."

Poppy bit her lip hard. They had to do something, and she couldn't just move on without trying at least. "Let's try digging them out. Maybe it'll restore the data."

Kiriya quirked an eyebrow and nodded. They both turned to Saki's upright grave before them and sighed. Kiriya was the first to make a move, digging his hand into the dirt and trying to claw it out. But it wouldn't move. It didn't even crumble away like it should've at this angle. Poppy tried next, but it felt like the dirt was physically repelling her from even touching it. While she kept trying, Kiriya transformed into Gear Zero, but even that didn't work.

With only one thing they hadn't tried yet, they reluctantly grabbed onto Saki's arm and pulled. She didn't budge. After a few more tries, they agreed this would take some careful observation and work and some decoding with a safe Chronicle gashat. But the fact she was here meant there was at least there was some morbid hope even for patients who'd been deleted.

They moved to the floor below, and a similar situation greeted them. It was mostly empty, but on the main wall of the chamber, dead center between the two sets of stairs, was a giant carving of a dragon, and at its base was another hole, filled with dirt. It was obvious who this was supposed to be, but unlike the other "coffins" above, there wasn't even a limb sticking out, making them think Kuroto was right, and there was no hope for Graphite.

Poppy puffed out her cheeks determinedly, striding forward and driving her hand right into the dirt. They'd come this far, so she had to at least try to get him out. The reward of seeing Kuroto's face when they proved him wrong was what drove Kiriya forward as he moved to the side of the coffin opposite of her and started digging.

This time, they were actually able to move the dirt, and they made incomprehensible sounds of excitement as they started digging faster. It was at that moment, a bright red, spiked arm fell loose from the dirt, and they both screamed. They just stared at it like it would come to life and attack them at any second.

After a few minutes of silence and nothing, Poppy approached it cautiously. She picked it up, holding it carefully and just stared at it. Kiriya wasn't sure what to say and just turned his eyes away, letting her have the moment. She looked so fragile, and he was always bad at dealing with his patients' loved ones when he was alive, so he really couldn't do anything at the moment and debated going back to digging or staying still for a moment of silence.

Before he could decide to do either, he felt something tap his palm. Loose dirt crumbled away under his hand and whatever it was slid fully into his hand, wrapping around until it was— Oh fuck it was _holding_ his hand. Stuff like this happened all the time in the morgue, but it didn't get any less startling, so he jolted back, yanking another familiar arm from the dirt with him.

Poppy looked up, and her jaw dropped at the sight of him trying to shake Graphite's other arm off him, hand tightly gripping his.

"Fuck!" She dropped Graphite's other arm and dashed back to the hole, digging her hands in and wrenching out clumps of dirt.

She kept going, paying no mind to Kiriya's cries for help as she pulled out body part after body part until the hole was emptied. They stared at the scattering of armor and pieces of Graphite in the dirt, unsure of what to make of them.

"Jeez, Gamedeus really messed him up," Kiriya mumbled.

"Well, at least we have him, now all we have to do is—" Poppy got cut off as Graphite's body parts started to glow at the cut seams.

The hand that had Kiriya in a death grip let go to fall to the ground, dragging across it through the dirt like it was magnetically attracted to the rest of the body. Poppy and Kiriya watched in horrified fascination as the parts attached themselves, uncaring of the angles they hooked up to the body at. The vaguely reassembled Graphite started to stand up, his body twisting to get back to its original shape. Bright amber lines of code ran over the areas that needed patching like veins, making the part glow a bit before it snapped back into the proper form with sickening crunches and snaps.

Poppy felt faint, lids fluttering, trying to comprehend what was happening, and Kiriya was pretty sure he was going to be sick, gripping onto her shoulder for emotional support. They always thought bugsters didn't have internal anatomy, but Graphite sounded _very_ squishy and bony internally as he literally pulled himself together. They were going to need an extensive talk with Kuroto to find out "what the actual _fuck"_ he was thinking when he designed this as a bugster feature.

With one final crack, Graphite's upper torso span to face the right way, the light faded, and Graphite stood before them. He regarded them carefully, unmoving and silent, waiting for them to make the first move.

"Dude, what the fuck," Kiriya whispered.

Poppy rushed over to him, dragging Kiriya with because he was still gripping tight to her shoulder. "Graphite! Are you okay? That sounded _terrible!"_

Graphite shrugged. "Yeah, I feel fine."

Kiriya swallowed hard. "Maybe he's in shock. I think I am."

Poppy checked Graphite over, Kiriya attached to her by his weakening grip on her shoulder like a lamprey trailing in a current. Satisfied with what she saw, Poppy came around to Graphite's front again, nodding at him with a big grin.

"Well, if anything goes wrong, we can take care of it at CR!" she chirped. "Let's get out of here and head back!"

Graphite tilted his head warily. "Why would you want me back?"

"Well, Parad's been lonely, and we thought you coming back would be a good pick-me-up for him. But mainly it was because Kuroto said it would be impossible to bring you back, and we were suspicious, so we decided to prove him wrong."

"So essentially, this is one big fuck you to Genm." He chuckled. "I can get behind that."

Kiriya, finally feeling well enough to separate from Poppy, decided he liked Graphite.

And with that, they took out the proto DKHZ gashat and used it to exit the world, Graphite in tow.

* * *

When they finally arrived back in the CR breakroom, it was complete chaos. Everyone was yelling at each other or pacing around, tearing the place apart like they were frantically looking for something. Even Kuroto was loose, but secured in those LED strings of lights that suppressed bugster abilities so Nico could yell at him.

All eyes in the room turned to them as they touched down, and Nico let out a sound that was suspiciously like a sob, running over to Poppy and almost bowling her over as she wrapped her up in a bear hug. Emu walked over and gripped Kiriya similarly, collapsing against him until he was short enough to rest his head on Kiriya's shoulder. Kuroto was staring, open-mouthed, at Graphite, face turning pale in shock.

"That's... You're? What? You were... That's impossible..." Kuroto mumbled.

Graphite shrugged a shoulder. "Fuck you, I got better."

"What happened?" Kiriya asked. Big mistake.

"What happened?" Nico yelled. _"What happened?"_ She let go of Poppy long enough to kick Kiriya in the shin. He doubled over, and Emu stumbled back, trying to support him. "What _happened_ is you and Poppy going missing for a _week,_ and Parad and Kuroto had no clue where you were or killed you and hid the evidence!"

Poppy and Kiriya locked eyes in horror before turning back to the rest of the room.

"Nico, we couldn't have possibly been gone that long," Poppy patted her head comfortingly. "We just had the meeting about patient data recovery yesterday! And! Oh! We have _so_ much to tell you about what we found in Drago Knight! It's gonna be so helpful in treatment." She bounced on her toes, even though she was exhausted. Nico seemed like she needed the show of strength more than Poppy needed rest.

"That was almost a week ago. It's the 24th." Taiga squinted at them like he couldn't believe they were there.

Kiriya, finally starting to get feelings besides pain his leg again, took his phone out, and his eyes widened at the time. He held it out for Poppy, and she squeezed Nico tight.

23:59

24 December 2017

Poppy and Kiriya let out almost twin groans of exhaustion. No wonder they were dead tired. It'd taken them _six days_ to find Graphite.

Six whole days of wandering around in the forest and fighting off the most terrible monsters they'd ever encountered.

If there was any strength left in their bodies, it would've been used to kill Kuroto right then.

Instead, they just collapsed against the people holding them, sagging in a mix of exhaustion, relief, and despair. Emu and Nico got them seated on either end of the couch, and they curled up against the arms.

The rest of CR pulled up chairs and formed a huddle around them.

"Please explain what you were up to these past six days," Hiiro said, crossing his legs, face deadpan, preparing for a ridiculous explanation from them.

They tiredly explained how they dove into the proto Drago Knight Hunter files. The stories got jumbled and ran on, and details were lost in their exhaustion, but they did their best. All the while, they made some very pointed comments and glares Kuroto's way as they described the terrible obstacles they had to go through, though he seemed utterly unfazed about it. 

The only comment he had to offer was, "I called them _proto_ gashats for a reason."

Fortunately, Emu had their backs and assured them the released Drago Knight Hunter Z was pretty much just as glitchy and difficult to get through. Graphite gave a silent nod of affirmation as well, making Kuroto's eye twitch, and Kiriya decided he _really_ liked Graphite. Emu was already great and lovely, and Kiriya was glad he could rely on him for the most part.

By the time they were halfway through the story of Kiriya nearly getting vored by something Graphite identified as a Great Jagras, Hiiro interrupted, asking them to get to the point and how Graphite was even there. Poppy visibly deflated, and Kiriya rolled his eyes, but they skipped over the actual _days_ they spent running around in Drago Knight in favor of describing the patient data in the starting town. Sure, it was the most important point, but the shock of surviving almost constant near-death experiences hadn't worn off for either Poppy or Kiriya, and they desperately wanted to talk about it. They shared a look, silently agreeing to discuss it later and tried their best to move on.

They finally talked about the source code storage area and how the patients were being stored, meaning there was hope even for people who'd been deleted, making Hiiro and Taiga perk up interestedly. While Saki was still in the category of "we still have no clue how to safely extract patient data even with the master Chronicle gashat because shit's just _dripping_ and _nasty_ with the Gamedeus virus," bugsters proved to be a much easier extraction.

So, in theory, they could restore Salty by going through Chronicle like this, too, not that anyone besides Graphite or Parad were too eager to try out. But Salty would be a good starting point and provide some insightful practice runs before trying it on people they could seriously damage with this procedure.

"I feel like this is the most in tune with the holidays a gift could get," Kiriya chuckled once the conversation was starting to wind down.

Poppy grimaced at him. "I'm afraid to ask, but how is that?"

"Hey, he's a 'son of God' and was reborn on Christmas, he's basically Dragon Jesus now."

Kiriya expected the blank or exasperated stares, but he never in his life imagined he'd get a sharp noise out of Taiga. His hand whipped up to cover his mouth, and Nico looked up at him in horror.

"Was that... Was that a _laugh?"_ She whirled on Kiriya, "Did you literally just make a joke so bad you scared a laugh out of him?"

Taiga turned away from her, still covering up his mouth. He tried to respond to her, but all that came out was another muffled giggle.

"What the FUCK?" Nico shrieked.

"I—!" Taiga began but had to smother another chuckle behind his hand, making a weird crackling sound.

Poppy's hand latched onto Kiriya's shoulder painfully. "What have you done?" She whispered.

"That was so stupid, Kiriya. What the fuck?" Taiga's voice was nearly a squeak at this point. He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "Everything about that was so wrong—" He scrunched his face up and covered his grin again before letting out a cackle. "Dragon Jesus?!" He gasped and threw his head back in an honest to god fit of laughter.

"You broke him... You actually fucking broke him."

Everyone stared at Taiga with a mix of shock and awe as he broke down into actual giggles trying to compose himself. Kiriya took stock of how ridiculous this whole thing was, his eyes landing on a distressed and shocked Kuroto, and, fuck it, he was sleep-deprived as hell. He let out a howl of laughter as well, making Poppy look at him like he'd suddenly declared how much he loved Kuroto or something. She tried to shake the shoulder she had in her death grip. No one else ended up laughing, and later, they would all look back on this as one of the more surreal experiences they'd ever had.

The supposed man of the hour, now forgotten, stood near the staircase railing. Graphite leaned back against it and let out a soft sigh. This wasn't how he ever pictured being revived again. If he were honest, he'd say he expected to never be brought back again. But, Graphite decided, if it had to happen, this wasn't the worst way it could've gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
